Oct 1, 2006 - Two breweries exhibited astonishing consistency in winning honors at the 2006 Great American Beer Festival.

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New Glarus Brewing from Wisconsin and Pelican Pub & Brewery from Oregon not only earned "brewery of the year" titles for the second straight year, but did so by capturing medals in the same categories with the same beers.

New Glarus won two golds for the second straight year: with Belgian Red in Fruit and Vegetable Beer and with Cherry Stout in the increasingly competitive Wood and Barrel-aged Beer category (58 entries). That was good enough to earn the brewery Mid-Size Brewery of the year. New Glarus also won Small Brewery of the Year in 2003 before growing out of that competition. That year New Glarus took both silver and bronze in Wood and Barrel-Aged.

Pelican Pub & Brewery - located in Pacific City - moved up in size to win the Large Brewpub award after capturing Small Brewpub honors in 2005. Kiwanda Cream Ale won gold for the second straight year, MacPelican's Scottish Ale won silver for the second straight year, and Dryman's Dark Ale won gold in 2006 after taking silver in 2005.

Pelican captured to more medals as well. Tsunami Stout won the gold in the Foreign-Style Stout category and Stormwatcher's Winterfest took the silver medal in the Barley Wine-Style Ale category.

Pabst Brewing won the Large Brewing Company competition - although all its beers are brewed by Miller Brewing - and Bear Republic Brewing in Healdsburg, Calif., won Small Brewery honors.

Flossmoor Station Brewing Co. in Flossmoor, Ill., captured the Small Brewpub title.

Competition entries came from 450 breweries, with a total of 2,402 beers being judged. More than two-thirds of those beers - from 383 breweries - were available during four sessions of the festival at the Colorado Convention Center. The event set a record for attendace with 41,000 at four sessions - up from 29,500 last year. The last three sessions sold out.